You told yourself to get moving, and you’ve done it. Congrats. You’ve even started liking the feeling of a good sweat. Congrats again. But...

SHERWOOD PARK - Scott Plamondon and Dylan Joslin are in the same parkour beginners class. Plamondon, 24, is there to learn the proper techniques of the sport; Joslin, 13, wants “to learn how to impress all the babes.”

You may not know what parkour is by name, but you’ll know it if you remember the spectacular chase sequence in the James Bond movie remake, Casino Royale (scary jumps from construction crane to construction crane), or the parkour-laden Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Parkour (par-cur) was developed from the military obstacle-course training known as parlours du combatant. Frenchman David Belle founded the modern-day version, adapted for an outdoor, urban setting, in the early 1990s.

Like golf fanatics, Edmonton tracers (male practitioners of parkour) and traceuses (their female equivalents), faced long winters longing for spring to come again so they could get back to their sport — until last November. That’s when instructor 2J Pantoja provided them with an indoor place to play.

It has had waiting lists for classes since it opened. Drop-in evenings attract 50 or more adults, and the numbers just keep climbing.

“Some people come because they want to get fit,” says Pantoja, 24, who sports an impressive pair of guns.

“But in the end, they’re as passionate and as much of a (parkour) addict as I am,” he adds with a smile, “and trust me, there is no rehab for this.”

Alex Emokpae, 22, who has arrived for a Wednesday drop-in, says he took up parkour because it looked cool and fun.

“But the more I got into it, the more empowered I kind of felt. Whenever you learn a new move, you get an amazing sense of pride,” he explains.

“It’s also kind of like a getaway. All your problems melt away and you kind of focus on the moment.”

Dillon Bougerolle, 18, another drop-in, says parkour has encouraged him to live a healthier life. Being active gives him more energy, and his lungs are stronger since he stopped smoking.

“I don’t feel like I need it anymore, and I don’t go out drinking anymore.”

Like Pantoja, some tracers started out as skateboarders, non-traditional athletes looking for a new non-traditional athletic activity. Others were curious to see what parkour is all about after watching videos online.

“People come in here and learn one move, and they then want to do that move bigger and funnier and longer, and that’s just one move,” Pantoja says.

“There are thousands of moves in parkour so there’s a constant feeling of satisfaction. You’re always competing against yourself, one second ago.”

Because they can do things most people can’t, tracers tend to show off.

Dylan Joslin says his interest was piqued by a friend who was always doing crazy moves and saying things like, ‘Oh, I’m such a ninja. I do parkour.’ ”

The teen’s mom overheard the comments once, and asked her son if he wanted to be a ninja too.

“I said ‘Yeah, that’d be cool,’ and the next day she says, ‘By the way, I signed you up for parkour,’ ” Joslin recalls.

The tracers’ playspace includes a corner of the gym that features fake walls and buildings they can climb and jump off.

But Pantoja warns them not to parkour off real buildings.

“That’s dangerous and I don’t want that to come from me or the gym, because safety is always No. 1,” he explains.

Last June, a 24-year-old Russian woman in St. Petersburg plunged 17 storeys to her death trying to jump from the roof of one building to another. It was her first parkour lesson.

Plamondon, a systems analyst, has no plans to jump from building to building. But the self-taught traceur does want to learn proper technique so he can parkour safely. He hesitated while doing a roll, falling hard on his shoulder, and pushing his collarbone out of place.

(Pantoja jokes you can tell someone is a traceur if they let themselves fall when they slip on ice, rather than fighting to stay upright, and instinctively roll.)

Parkour in Edmonton has been flying mostly under the radar, but Pantoja expects that to change this summer with growing numbers of people knowing what parkour is and how to do it. He hopes the public doesn’t judge them.

“Some people see parkour on the street and assume everyone who does it is rebellious, trespassing and other negative things like that, but only 20 per cent of tracers are like that,” he says.

“Don’t associate that with us, who do this respectfully, who do this for the discipline. Other people go outside to run and jog and bike, we go outside and do this.”

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